Spanish fathers in search of extra down time during the working day must be whooping for joy. In a controversial move, the European Union’s Court of Justice has ruled that the current Spanish lawentitling new mothers to an hour’s leave from work each day to breast feed, discriminates against fathers and should be revised.

A new deal for 'breast feeding' fathers?

Currently the father of a baby of up to nine months of age is permitted a discretionary reduction in working hours for breast feeding duties only if the mother is in fulltime employment and is willing to relinquish her own entitlement in his favour. Under new guidelines, fathers will be able to choose between taking an hour’s break during the day or to finish work 30 minutes earlier. The mind boggles as to how a man might perform the biological feat of breast feeding but this is of little concern to judges in Luxembourg whose main concern is to eradicate sex discrimination from the exisiting law.

I asked one of my Spanish friends, a father of a baby boy, how he felt about breast feeding his son. He laughed out loud. Evidently the new ruling should not be taken verbatim. My friend told me that he liked the idea of reduced working hours for nine months, guiltily admitting that he’d probably use the time for reading the newspaper or doing odd jobs about the home. Another young father told me that the concept would never work in reality, especially in the current economic climate when he and his colleagues were working additional hours to keep afloat.

How Spanish bosses will take to the idea is yet to be discovered, but some lucky Spanish fathers could find themselves gaining an extra five hours in the working week. Whether or not they’ll use the time to put a feeding bottle to good use remains to be seen.